What process involves converting readable data into unreadable characters to prevent unauthorized access?

The process that involves converting readable data into unreadable characters to prevent unauthorized access is encryption. Encryption transforms information into a format that cannot be understood without a decryption key or method. This ensures that even if the data is intercepted or accessed by unauthorized individuals, they cannot interpret the information without the necessary credentials.

Encryption is widely used to protect sensitive information, such as personal data and financial transactions, ensuring confidentiality and integrity. It employs algorithms and keys to encode the data, making it a critical security measure in various applications, including secure communications, data protection at rest, and during transmission over networks.

While hashing, tokenization, and obfuscation serve specific purposes in data protection, encryption uniquely focuses on maintaining the confidentiality of the data by making it unreadable without explicit permission, thus aligning with the requirement of preventing unauthorized access.